How many Motors are allowed???

[Smeg-asurus]

Can a robot have more of one type of motor than is supplied in the kit?

Or is the number of each particular type of motor limited by how many are allready supplied?

NEED AN ANSWER ASAP

and thank you to cheif delphi for hosting this forum

[kiracofe8]

The rule in the past has always been that as far as motors go, what you see in the kit is what you get. No additional motors are allowed.

[Smeg-asurus]

Thank you for your imput, but as many rules have been lightened up on this year, my team wants to be sure on this.

Especially during the early days of design, we want to be sure, as the specific answer to this will greatly effect how we design our machine.

Anyone else's opinions on this matter, would be appreciated. Please make reference of which specific rule you refer to.

[AdamT]

I had the impression the rule was only the motors provided. This has always made the competition fair to those teams without the funds to go and buy more motors. If you want to be 100% sure, you should post a question on the yahoo groups message board created by FIRST.

The site is: http://yahoo.groups.com/group/FRCtech2002

[Gadget470]

You got your link a bit back words, not yahoo.groups, groups.yahoo
--

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FRCtech2002/

[Smeg-asurus]

My arguement to the rules is still the fact that i cannot find a rule that specifically limits the number of one kind of motor to the amout supplied.

Does anyone see a rule I may have skipped over?

I did submit my question to the yahoo group but i believe that will take quite a bit of time for a reply.

[ErikJusten]

In the "Robot" section of the rules, Rule 1.1.1 clearly states:
"There are three sources of materials:
1) parts found in the Kit of parts
2) Parts from the Additional Hardware List
3) Parts from Small Parts"

Motors certainly aren't on the additional Hardware list, and they aren't in small parts. I believe that "parts found in kit of parts" means if it isn't in the box, then you can't use it - that is, you can't go out and buy more of something, even if it's in the kit, since the bought part wasn't found in the kit of parts. Further on in the same rule it says that "any material used in the robot must come from the above sources and no other." This I think backs up my claim that an extra drill motor wouldn't be allowed since it wouldn't come from the kit of parts, but rather from something else.

I'm pretty sure (I'll have to check when I get home) that the rule was always like this, but no one ever really questioned the english........ And it was always judged that you can't go and use 4 drill motors if only given 3.

[gthakore]

you can have 8 motors according to your circut board

[Joe Johnson]

You can clearly have more than 8 motors.

My understanding is that you can use all the motors that are in the kit:

3 Bosch Drill (in fact a Johnson Electric motor)
2 Chiaphua
2 Fisher Price (in fact a Mabuchi motor)
1 Mabuchi
2 Globes
1 Johnson Electric
2 Keyang
2 Jideco
1 "Torque Motor"
=============
Total 16

If you think about it, there are even more motors in the kit but you can't use them to get shaft work out of them (the fans, the pump, the beacon light motor, etc.)

Joe J.

[gthakore]

I meant that you can only have a maximum of 8 motors connected to the circut board. the rest are just extras for selection


gthakore

[Adrian Wong]

There are 14 PWM outputs and 8 relay outputs. You can use as many Speed Controllers and Spikes as you want as long as they power the motors. It would be very difficult to exhaust all those connections.

I believe it is possible to connect all the motors in the kit, supposing you had enough speed controllers, to the Robot Controller. Each could be delegated its own PWM or relay connection, allowing for individual control of each motor.

In short, you can have more than eight.

[Joseph F]

i think the 8 motor limit statement was due to the fact that you only get 8 30AMP breakers and all motors must be connected to a 30A breaker.

[Adrian Wong]

Oh. In that case, you can still have more than eight motors since snap-action circuit breakers are on the Additional Parts List.